


Lantern

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Although Also Some Mischa Feelings, But Mostly Fluff and Doting, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Murder Husbands, Sickfic, Truly Gross Quantities Of Fluff, now with art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A matched pair of prompted fics in which the Murder Husbands take turns being crankily sick, and fluffily caretaking. Surprisingly un-murdery; pretty much everyone's too sick for murderation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heat and Light

**Author's Note:**

> OMG there is ART NOW [over here](https://dalmiostagno.tumblr.com/post/157583193842/some-water-splashes-over-the-edge-as-hannibal).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted: Will is really sick and Hannibal puts him in the bath. Will is like a weak kitten and begs Hannibal to join him. "Please. It'll make me feel better." he whines, knowing even in his feverish state that Hannibal can't or won't refuse him. Hannibal doesn't say no because when does he ever, but he gets in the bathtub fully clothed behind Will and wraps him in his arms.

_I am a lantern ---_  
_My head a moon_  
_Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin_  
_Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive._  
_Does not my heat astound you. And my light._

_~Sylvia Plath, Fever 103°_

 

* * *

 

_Day One:_

It’s not that Will _minds_ the smelling thing; it’s hardly the weirdest part of their lives.  It’s just that he’s trying to get dressed at the moment, and Hannibal’s practically plastered against his back sniffing at him.  He’s worse to maneuver around than any dog Will’s ever had.  At least the dogs are trainable.

“I can’t possibly even smell like anything,” he complains, reaching for his shirt.  “I just got out of the shower.  Please tell me you’re not developing some kind of soap fetish.”

Hannibal takes a step back and looks at him thoughtfully before changing the subject: “I think I’m going to pick up some groceries tomorrow.  Do you need anything?”

_Day Two:_

Hannibal returns from town loaded with bags and spends much of the afternoon in the kitchen, chopping and simmering and humming along with some symphony that Will probably ought to be able to recognize by now.  Will wanders into the kitchen at one point to notice the world’s biggest stock pot and asks, “How long have we had that?”

“I picked it up this morning.” Hannibal looks so pleased with himself that Will’s mildly suspicious.  “Pleased” is bordering on “smug” and that doesn’t always end well.  “I had an urge to make soup.”

It does smell delicious, Will has to concede.  Although soup seems like a weird choice in the middle of summer.  He peeks into the pot and the smell tickles a vague sense memory.  It takes a moment to chase it down, and then: “Enough chicken soup for a small army?”

Hannibal tosses a handful of something else into the pot and covers it up again.  He pulls Will in for a hug (and another damn sniff, which Will decides not to even dignify with a response) and then pushes him gently away from the stove and toward the living room.

“I’m making salmon for dinner.  It’ll be a few hours.  Why don’t you go rest for a while?”

Will blinks, mildly confused.  “We’re not having the soup?”

“Not yet. Tomorrow, maybe.”

There’s no point arguing with Hannibal when he’s in his inscrutable-smugness mood.  And Will is actually a little tired; he could do with a nap.  He rolls his eyes but lets himself be directed out of the room.

On his way out the door he sneezes three times in rapid succession, startling one of the dogs.

_Day Three:_

Will wakes up in a sweat with his teeth chattering, and for a confused moment it’s as if time has slipped sideways.  That old familiar semi-lucid sense of being on fire, burning from the inside out.  He expects to see his house in Wolf Trap. His dogs; his careful, simple life.

Of course he sees nothing of the sort.  Of course when his mind rights itself, he understands the vat of soup.

_It’s fuck-off o’clock, I’m Will Graham but the last documents with that name went up in flames two years ago, and it would serve my smug goddamn husband right if I woke him up right now to yell at him._

Instead, Will slides unsteadily out of bed and makes his shivery way to the bathroom medicine cabinet for something to bring down the fever.

He sleeps fitfully through the rest of the night and well into the next day.  Hannibal wakes him eventually with more pills, the damn soup, and reassurances that the dogs have been fed and walked.

Will forces the pills and a few swallows of soup down before mumbling, “I can’t believe you smelled this two days ago. You’re a freak of nature.”

Hannibal smiles serenely at him, unbothered, and answers, “So you’ve told me many times.  You can tell me again when you’re back on your feet.”

He gives every impression of being prepared to sit there and hand-feed Will, so Will glowers and picks up the spoon himself to manage a few more swallows.  It is good, but his throat hurts and his muscles are protesting at the effort it takes to keep sitting upright.  

He manages to convince Hannibal to leave the soup at his bedside by taking a solemn vow to eat more later, and slides back down again to drift in and out of hazy fever-dreams.  Abigail is in some of them, and Dolarhyde, and Will’s most-hated sixth-grade bully.  Later in the afternoon, Hannibal sits next to him and reads aloud, or Will thinks he does - it’s possible he dreams that, too.

_Day Four_

“I can _walk_ , Hannibal,” Will snaps, or tries to.

He’s feeling slightly more human but still not precisely snappy.  Another night of fractured sleep was punctuated by both chills and coughing, for extra fun. He’s exhausted and grumpy and wondering vaguely if he should be worried that the fever hasn’t broken for good yet, but he supposes his bloodhound of a husband would know if there were anything to be really worried about, given that he can’t stop sniffing at Will every so often.

Hannibal backs off from his attempt to scoop Will off the bed, but he doesn’t look happy about it.  “Of course you can, but there’s no reason to.”

“The _reason_ is that I’m a grown man who isn’t actually dying, even if that might be preferable right now.”

That earns him a sigh and an _I-am-disappointed-in-you_ sort of expression, but Hannibal vanishes into the bathroom to check the bath temperature again.  He’s been fussing for several minutes about making sure it’s the right temperature for a fever, neither too hot nor too cold.  

Will watches him go, decides he definitely isn’t dying if he can appreciate the view of the man’s ass that much even if he’s in no state or mood to do anything about it, and heads after him.  Slowly and carefully, since he actually does feel like he might fall over, and he’s not giving Hannibal the satisfaction of having to pick him up and carry him back to bed.

The bath turns out to be warm and fragrant with god knows what Hannibal’s put into it.   He lets himself slide all the way under for a moment, entirely surrounded by warmth and near-silence.  He’d stay there longer but another tickling cough swells up in his chest as he holds his breath, so he forces himself up into the air again.  When the racking coughing fit passes, he rests his head back against the rim of the tub and looks up at Hannibal, lingering conspicuously in the doorway.

“Worried I’m going to drown, or just admiring the view?”

“I’m capable of doing more than one thing at once,” Hannibal answers primly, and Will grins despite himself.

He feels like hell and he’s still annoyed that Hannibal didn’t see fit to tell him he was getting sick, but Hannibal’s trying so hard to take care of him.  It’s not his fault that Will hates being hovered over when he’s not feeling well.  And truth be told, maybe he doesn’t hate it so much, when it’s Hannibal.

He summons a burst of energy to flick a handful of water at Hannibal, most of it falling short but a few drops dampening his shirt.  “There.  You’re going to have to take that off now. Might as well get in here with me.”

“I was going to change the sheets,” Hannibal says, in what’s barely a protest. It’s not as if it’s ever taken much to get Hannibal into a shared bath.

It takes very little acting to look tired and as if he might slip under and drown at any moment, since that’s not far off from the truth, but it’s possible Will oversells it a little when he asks, “Please?  It’ll make me feel better.”

Then again, it’s almost impossible to oversell anything to Hannibal.  He’s such a sucker for a well-aimed _please_?

Hannibal starts with “If I come in there with you,” but it’s not entirely convincing as a call for compromise given that he’s working at his buttons as he speaks.  “…then afterwards you will eat more soup while I change the sheets.  And you’ll let me carry you back.”

Will considers.  “You’ll stay and read to me?”

Hannibal concedes and Will considers pressing his luck by asking Hannibal to make him cherry Jell-O for his sore throat, but instead he scoots forward to make room in the tub.  If he has to take the time to explain the nostalgic value of Jell-O and then soothe Hannibal’s horror afterwards, the water’s going to get cold.

Some water splashes over the edge as Hannibal climbs in and settles himself behind Will.  There’s a bit of confusion over whose legs are going where, and a less-than-sexy coughing fit.  Nonetheless, when everything settles out, Will finds himself comfortably leaning back against Hannibal’s chest and wrapped up in familiar arms strong enough that they _could_ carry him, were Will less grumpy about being babied.

“There,” he says contentedly.  “Much less risk of drowning now.”

Hannibal smooths Will’s wet hair back against his skull and reaches for the shampoo.  Will lets himself drift, warm and cared-for and mostly happy, other than the lingering desire to rip out his own throat to make the scratching, stinging pain stop.

They linger a long time until the water cools and eventually Will does let Hannibal carry him back to bed, but as payback he explains Jell-O.  Hannibal counters with some sort of horrible-sounding aspic-based dessert idea, and they compromise on ice cream.  

_Day Five:_

Will spends most of the day on the sofa with the dogs, who are near-frantic at having him shut away in the bedroom for two days.  They glom onto him from the moment he emerges, and can hardly be persuaded to leave his side for food or romps in the yard.

He can’t quite manage to focus on a book, but he finds some very soothing fishing shows on one of the outdoor-sports channels.  Later in the afternoon when those run out, he settles into a marathon of bad movies punctuated by naps.

Hannibal shuttles back and forth from the kitchen, where he’s tending a vat of consommé, bringing Will endless cups of honeyed tea.  He appears to be endlessly pleased that Will’s fever has broken and he’s feeling well enough to be out of their room.  Will rather suspects that Hannibal credits the improvement entirely to his damn soup.

Will continues to admire the view every time Hannibal walks away from him, back into the kitchen.  He’s just about decided to go on living, rattling cough or no rattling cough.

_Day Six:_

Feeling just about human again, Will declares that he’s going to take the dogs for their afternoon walk.  As they leave the yard, he pretends not to notice Hannibal hovering at one of the windows watching to make sure Will doesn’t have a fainting spell or whatever it is that Hannibal fears.  They don’t make it far before he tires out and turns them back for home, but it feels good to get some fresh air and sunshine.  

Back inside, Will kicks off his shoes and goes to find Hannibal to prove he’s alive and well.  He finds his husband in the study, nose in a book, doing a good job of pretending he hasn’t been fretting about Will’s absence for half an hour.

He drops onto the sofa and makes a pest of himself until Hannibal puts the book aside and gives him a welcome-home kiss.  Will does his best to turn that into a proper kiss.  It’s been days after all, days that he’s been tired and cranky and not in any state or mood for –

Hannibal pulls away from the kiss suddenly, with the oddest expression, and Will wonders for a moment if he’s somehow done something wrong.  Startled Hannibal, failed to brush his teeth, something?

Hannibal makes a strangled little noise and then sneezes, twice.


	2. Flickering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted: Hannibal goes down with a bad case of flu or some other sickness, rendering him quite helpless. At first he's really cranky, almost insufferable when Will tries to take care of him, but as he slowly realizes the many benefits of being cared for (and gets a little better) he starts to enjoy himself and take full advantage of his situation...

  _Darling, all night_  
 _I have been flickering, off, on, off, on._  
 _The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss._  
 _~Sylvia Plath, Fever 103°_

 

* * *

 

In the dream coiled tight around him, holding him rigid and lock-jawed even while he wants to thrash and yell, Hannibal is cold and hot at the same time. Mischa is just hot, burning hot, _don’t-touch-the-stove-Hannibal-you’ll-hurt-yourself_ hot, all glassy eyes and labored breath. It’s been a long time since he had this dream, but it hasn’t changed much.  Mischa’s helplessness, and his own in the face of it.

He wakes when Will slips from their bed and out the door to feed the dogs and take one of his early morning runs, but he doesn’t let on.  He’s not sure his voice would be steady if he spoke.  Better to feign continued sleep until he has command of himself again.  He still feels fever-shivery from the dream.

Eventually he does get up and dressed, and makes breakfast for them both, but the dream lingers and leaves him out of sorts all day.  Tired and achy, a pain in his throat like crying without tears.  It’s the sort of day that used to find him shattering teacups.  But Will selected the teacups ranged neatly in the kitchen cabinet, and he would never shatter something Will chose for their life together.  He considers whether a bowl might satisfy; maybe one of the mixing bowls.  

In the end he spends most of the day at the piano instead, crashing chords into each other, but nothing more breakable than that.  After the second time he snaps at Will over nothing in particular, Will rolls his eyes and withdraws to his own study. It’s not the first one of these moods he’s seen, nor is it likely to be the last.

So it’s not until much later, when Hannibal is making dinner - a desultory affair he has no real heart for tonight - that Will gets a good look at him.  And then looks again, and lays a hand against Hannibal’s cheek and then his forehead.

“You’re burning up,” he says with a frown, and Hannibal’s bad mood melts just a little under the balm of Will’s concern and the cool touch of his fingers.

He lets Will drag him away from the counter and into a chair to have his temperature taken only because he’s certain he’s fine, and it’ll be easier to prove it than to have Will fussing at him for the remainder of the evening.  So he’s surprised when it registers a fever high enough that he can’t blame it on cooking, surprised enough that he lets Will bully him into taking some aspirin and staying seated at the table while Will finishes dinner under Hannibal’s direction.

Hannibal’s still not particularly hungry but he manages most of a plateful anyway, both because Will helped to make it and because to _not_ eat would be to admit that his throat feels scraped raw.  And that what he thought all day was an ancient grief clawing at his voice is, perhaps, something as banal as a virus.

Will hovers at the edge of Hannibal’s awareness for the remainder of the evening, clearing the table on his own, looking up often from his book to watch Hannibal turn pages of his, making a clumsy show of being so tired that he’s going to go to bed early and wouldn’t Hannibal like to come with him?  

Hannibal holds out for fifteen minutes after Will goes to bed. Finally he admits to himself that he really does want to lie down, that his lingering dream-and-probably-sickness-induced bad mood is not Will’s fault, and that he hasn’t actually comprehended a word he’s been reading all evening.  He uses the last of his wine to wash down another dose of aspirin and heads upstairs.

The bedroom is dark and quiet, Will’s breathing deep and even, but once Hannibal settles into the mattress he’s not surprised to find an arm snaking around his waist. Will’s voice is syrupy-thick with sleep in his ear as he mumbles, “Hey. Feeling any better?”

“Much,” Hannibal lies.  “Goodnight, Will.”

Will makes a vague sound that might be goodnight and is asleep again almost instantly. Hannibal lies awake for a while, throat scratching and temples pounding, until eventually he matches his own breaths to Will’s steady ones and lulls himself to sleep.

**************

Hannibal is most definitely not feeling better the next day.  The Mischa dream doesn’t recur, but he sleeps light and fretful and wakes full of bone-deep aches.  He feels vaguely as if he’s been fighting something large and mean in his sleep.  A bear, perhaps, or Jack Crawford.

It’s raining, so Will likely wouldn’t have gone for a run anyway, but Hannibal still feels hovered-over when he hears Will clattering around the kitchen instead of slipping out the front door with the dogs at his heels. He slips his robe on and makes his way down to the kitchen, before Will can bring breakfast upstairs and fuss at him about staying in bed.

Will points mock-sternly to a chair where there’s already a place set and announces, “Over there.  Breakfast will be ready in five minutes. Give or take. I think the toaster’s lying to me about how long it has left.”

Hannibal considers giving Will another lecture on the assorted knobs and dials of the toaster but decides against it. He’s too tired, but even if he weren’t, it would be the fourth or fifth time.  Will is an extremely intelligent man with a knack for mechanical items, and Hannibal’s concluded that if he cannot understand the toaster by now, it’s willful refusal and not a failure of Hannibal’s training.

He falls into the designated seat and asks, “What are we having?”

“Scrambled eggs.”  Will checks on the eggs and apparently decides they can be left alone briefly, before coming over to plunk a mug down in front of Hannibal and drop a good-morning kiss into his hair.  “Drink up.”

Hannibal peers suspiciously into the mug.  Tea.  Ginger tea and honey, too much honey by the smell of it.  “I suppose you’re having coffee.”

Will doesn’t look even slightly sorry when he confirms.  “If I tried to make you breakfast without having some coffee first, I’d have set the house on fire.  And I’m not the one who’s sick. Coffee’s not going to help your throat. That will.”

He smiles sweetly and adds, “Be a good boy and finish it, and I might make you some coffee afterwards.”

_Be a good boy._

Hannibal briefly considers murdering Will after all.  Their life no longer includes ready access to bone saws but there are always hands; there are always knives.  

When breakfast arrives, though, he’s glad he decided to let Will live.  The soft eggs are soothing for his throat, the ginger tea is spicy if sweeter than he’d like it, and he’s far too exhausted to hide a body anyway.  Besides, he never stops thrilling to the sight of Will across a breakfast table, rumple-headed and clinging to a coffee mug like contact with it might be all that’s keeping him upright.  If he had the energy, he’d lay Will out on the table right there, breakfast dishes be damned.  He does not have the energy, which is how he knows he really is sick.  He contents himself with memories of more energetic mornings, instead, and drinks his tea.  

Like a good boy.  Ugh.

The day drags - chilly grey mist outside, Hannibal’s cough interrupting his own concentration inside while he tries and mostly fails to read a book, the dogs going out briefly and tracking thick gobs of mud back inside after them.  Will takes a few minutes off from insisting that Hannibal stay hydrated, to go and scrub the muddy pawprints away.  Hannibal’s briefly pleased to have Will’s scrutiny turned away from him, and then almost instantly feels neglected for the fifteen minutes until Will is back to fussing at him.

It’s possible, he allows to himself although he’d bite his tongue bloody before admitting it aloud, that being feverish and weary makes him something other than rational.

He follows Will’s lead to an early bedtime without fuss this time, and doesn’t resist when Will insists on resting a cool hand on his forehead one more time to check for fever.  Sleep doesn’t come easily, but after Hannibal’s tossed and turned a few times, Will rolls over from his loose-limbed sprawl and twines himself around Hannibal before asking, “You really hate being sick, don’t you?”

“Very few people find illness enjoyable.”  It’s as close to an answer is Hannibal is willing to provide.  

“Yeah, but you really, _really_ hate it.”  Will isn’t particularly subtle about the fact that when he strokes Hannibal’s hair he’s also checking his forehead again.  Hannibal could complain but he’s tired, in that particular bone-weary way of a bad illness, and it’s easier to lean in to Will’s touch.

“There’s no dignity in it,” he finally allows with a sigh.  “Illness is messy.  And it reminds me of things I prefer to leave buried.”  Mischa’s eyes; her fevered scent.  Will’s, too, although that particular memory is complicated and not entirely without pleasure for Hannibal, if not for Will.

Will lets that pass with a soft wordless sound.  They still sometimes find themselves prying at each other’s lingering wounds, words sharper than they should be, old angers surfacing unexpectedly.  But not tonight.  

The sound turns into a long slow sigh, the sigh into a hum in Hannibal’s ear, the hum into what he supposes is some sort of bayou lullaby.  Something Will learned as a young child, probably, all curls and skinny limbs.  Not so different, really.  He drifts off, finally, thinking about a younger Will climbing trees, perching in high branches for solitude and escape.  

**************

On the third day, Hannibal decides dignity is overrated.

He wakes first, which would usually mean it’s his job to let the dogs out and provide them breakfast.  He considers that he might do so, but the bed is soft and Will half-draped over Hannibal’s back is comfortable and comforting.  And Will did want him to rest.

He nestles further under the blanket instead, and feigns sleep until the feigning becomes real and he drifts off again.

He sleeps straight through breakfast but lets Will bring him lunch on a tray on the sofa. He doesn’t protest about the crumbs in the cushions, or the over-honeyed tea.  He does convince Will that what he really needs to aid his recovery is an afternoon of watching movies, and company to do it with.

They make it partway through the first movie Hannibal’s decided on, before he catches Will suppressing a snicker.  Not particularly well, since Will’s curled up against his side and the ripple of suppressed laughter vibrates through Hannibal too.

Hannibal hits pause before noting, “All this time together and I had no idea you found decapitation so funny.”

Will twists enough to turn his face up to Hannibal instead of the television, rolling his eyes slightly.  “It’s just…this is so you.  Most people’s sick-day movie marathons aren’t all samurai.  Hell, some of us watch movies made after 1975.  Sometimes even in English.  Sometimes they’re funny.”

“The next one is funnier,” Hannibal promises, although if he had more energy he would argue that even _Kumonosu-jō_ has amusing moments. Arguably not the decapitation.

“Actually funny, or Kurosawa funny?”

Hannibal doesn’t recognize the distinction, and says as much, prompting Will to groan, but he puts his head back down in Hannibal’s lap and turns his attention back to the movie.

They watch three movies, and Will heats up some leftovers for dinner.  The dogs behave themselves, and Will decides Hannibal sounds better enough to be allowed a glass of wine before bed.  Hannibal bristles slightly at being “allowed” anything, but overall it’s a good day and by the end of it he’s feeling considerably better.

He thinks maybe he won’t mention that to Will, though.  There are enough leftovers in the fridge for at least one more day, and he thinks he might like to switch to French movies tomorrow.  Cocteau to start with, maybe, and then Godard.  More wine, for the sake of the theme.  

Surely Will can take one more day from his current projects to keep an eye on Hannibal.  Just to make sure he’s feeling better.

It wouldn’t do to rush his recovery, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feel free to come talk with me / yell at me / prompt me / whatever [over on Tumblr](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com).


End file.
